[thelist] OT (verbage)

Scott Johnson owolf at advancenet.net
Thu Aug 17 00:34:01 CDT 2000


>The problem with the verb "to impact" is not its status as a word, 
>but rather that it conveys very little information: "The new 
>competitor's business model impacted our bottom line." Impacted how? 
>The word, suffering from tremendous blandness, enjoys no true 
>association in anyone's linguistic model. It would be more precise to 
>say "The new competitor's business model _hurt_ our bottom line."
>
>That's the problem with most buzzwords. They're euphemisms.


Hmm, I always interpreted the word to be a superlative of "affected", 
i.e., to say that something "impacted" something else is to say that it 
"greatly affected" it.  If you substitute the phrase "greatly affected" 
into your example sentence I don't think it changes the intended meaning 
and yet would you still say that it was 'vacuous'?  Stating that 
something "greatly affected" something else doesn't tell you how either 
but I doubt it would raise as much disdain.


Scott Johnson




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